Claire Zulkey, a 44-year-old freelance writer from Chicago, has a well-established Morning routine: She takes her children to school, turns on the TV to her favorite show and does a full-body workout. Then Zulkey trains have a shower and gets to work.
Meghan Cully, on the other hand, works a full day before hitting the gym on the way home. The 32-year-old graphic designer from Maryland describes herself as a “slow starter” in the morning and finds it difficult to get going early in the day.
Everyone gets their workout, but is one time of day better than another?
Consider your fitness goals
A small study from Skidmore College investigated the benefits of morning and evening exercise for women and men. Paul J. Arciero, Ph.D., professor of health and human physiology sciences at Skidmore, was the lead researcher.
“We had the groups follow the same multimodal routine and randomly divided them into evening and morning groups,” he says. “We found that women and men responded differently to different types of exercise depending on the time of day, which surprised us.”
The study found that for women who want to lower their blood pressure or lose belly fat, morning workouts work best. Women who want to build upper body muscle, endurance or general Mood brightening should consider evening training sessions.
For male participants, the results were somewhat reversed: exercising in the evening reduced blood pressure, the risk of heart disease and feelings of fatigue, while, similar to women, they burned more fat when exercising in the morning. More research is needed to understand the reasons for these results.
The best thing, says Arciero, is to schedule your workouts around the time of day when you get the most bang for your buck. “If you’re a woman, you might want to do your cardio in the morning and your strength training in the evening,” he says.
Early risers versus night owls
“For many people, [the best time to exercise] depends on their chronotype,” says Jennifer J. Heisz, Ph.D., associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster University and author of Move the body, heal the mind.
Chronotype is your body’s natural tendency to sleep at a certain time. It determines whether you are a night owl or a early birdFor the 25% of the population who call themselves night owls, it is enough to get both sleep and getting enough exercise can be difficult, says Heisz.
“Exercising at night can sometimes be challenging because of societal norms,” she explains. “You might naturally stay up until midnight and exercise late at night, but if you have to leave the house at 7 a.m. the next morning, you’re not getting enough sleep.”
Sleep—which gives your body the time it needs to recover and reap the benefits of exercise—should always be a priority when training. Regardless of the research on the benefits of certain exercises at certain times of day, if you don’t get enough time to sleep, your results will be compromised.
How to reschedule your training time
If your goal is to change your routine to match Arciero’s findings regarding the time of day to exercise, or simply to make exercise more enjoyable even if it doesn’t fit your chronotype, Heisz says it’s possible.
“For example, if you want to get into a morning routine, the good news is that both sun and exercise can reset your biological signals,” she says. “Combine them by exercising outside in the sun and you’ll have a powerful effect.”
For older adults who sometimes wake up too early and can’t get back to sleep, the change they want may be to exercise in the evening. “That could help them fall asleep later and sleep through the night longer,” Heisz says.
If you’re worried that evening exercise will affect your ability to sleep, consider switching to gentler forms of exercise like yoga. Avoid strenuous exercise like running, as this can increase your heart rate and make it harder to switch off.
For Cully, who trains in the evenings, the trick is to work out on the way home from work, far enough from bedtime that it doesn’t affect her sleep. “If I went home first, I probably wouldn’t work out,” she admits. “But then I have the whole evening to wind down.”
No matter when you prefer to exercise, the most important thing, says Arciero, is a multimodal approach. For his study, Arciero developed a program called RISE that does just that – resistance training, sprint interval training, stretching and endurance. “We found that compliance was higher when each type of exercise was performed once a week, and so was the benefit,” he explains.
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